The great, always insightful Peter Sunderman makes an
argument for principled non-voting over at Culture 11 today,
which not only references the one political book I would force
every partisan to read if I were (ironically enough!) emperor,
The Cult of the Presidency--my chat with author Gene
Healy
lives here--but also ends with a sane and thus almost
entirely overlooked truth:
So vote, or don't, but either way, don't agonize over it, don't
raise an eyebrow at your friends and neighbors if they stay
home, and don't worry if the other side wins. Democracy will
march on, endlessly entertaining, endlessly frustrating,
endlessly compromised, and endlessly mediocre. American
greatness has persisted not in spite, but because of this: It
is not that our politics make us great; it is that they allow
us to do so on our own.
I could quibble a bit and say that more than a few elections have
resulted in restrictions on the personal and economic freedoms
that allow us the leeway to live lives that, if perhaps not
great, are at least more fully our own, which is why I'll be
voting in an election I think will not bode well for individual
liberty whoever wins. I'll admit, however, that the why make
myself complicit/encourage the bastards theory of
non-voting is singing sweetly as a siren to me this Monday
morning. And on this Suderman is exactly right: The
fetishization of voting as the supreme civic act is an
extraordinarily unfortunate fact of modern political life. Like
the welfare state, it absolves people of the need to take any of
the real, complex responsibility for what happens to their
communities, to their neighbors and loved ones, and, frequently
and most sadly, themselves.
Pass the buck and walk around feeling morally superior for
spending thirty second in a voting booth? Yes! We! Can!
Patrick O'Hannigan| 11.3.08 @ 1:46PM
Contra Sunderman and the "non-voting" option:
http://paragraphfarmer.blogspot.com/2008/11/deciding-whom-to-vote-for.html